Chapter 341:Water.

Chapter 341: 341:Water.

Silver followed the sound of water for nearly forty minutes before the tunnel finally opened.

At first, the noise had been faint enough that he occasionally questioned whether he was actually hearing running water or simply mistaking the echo of distant dripping for something larger.

The deeper he went, however, the clearer it became. The occasional splash became a continuous rushing sound, and the stale underground air gradually changed with it, carrying a cooler dampness that felt almost refreshing after so many hours surrounded by dry stone, worm secretion and the coppery smell of his own blood.

The final section of tunnel sloped downward slightly, forcing Silver to support himself against the wall whenever his injured leg protested.

He hated the descent, especially after spending so long trying to gain height, but the sound ahead was too promising to ignore now.

His headlamp swept over wet stone, then across patches of dark moss growing between cracks, and eventually the narrow passage ended completely.

Silver stepped through and stopped short in his tracks as he looked before him.

An actual stream ran across the cavern.

It entered through a broad opening near one side of the chamber, rushed across a shallow channel carved naturally through the stone and disappeared through another passage farther ahead.

The water wasn’t particularly deep from where Silver stood, perhaps reaching halfway up his shin in most places, but it moved quickly enough that tiny ripples reflected the light from his headlamp.

He simply stared at it, flabbergasted, then he laughed out loud. The sound echoed strangely through the cavern. His ribs immediately punished him.

He placed a hand against his side and grimaced. "I’m going to stop doing that eventually."

The stream continued flowing, completely indifferent to his suffering. He approached carefully.

The previous underground spring had already taught him not to assume water meant safety, so Silver didn’t immediately kneel down and stick his hands inside. Instead, he activated Spatial Sense first.

[Spatial Sense Lv2 Activated.]

His awareness spread through the chamber.

The cavern itself was larger than he’d initially thought. Several smaller cracks and passages extended from the walls, although most narrowed quickly enough that Silver couldn’t use them.

The stream continued through the chamber and disappeared into another tunnel, but unlike the spring he’d found earlier, there was unmistakable movement beyond his detection range.

The water actually went somewhere.

Silver concentrated on the immediate channel to find that there were no large creatures but a few small movements underneath stones; tiny cave life, most likely, nothing threatening.

He extended the skill slightly farther, still nothing dangerous. The headache began as a faint pressure behind his eyes forcing him to immediately deactivated the ability.

He wasn’t going to burn through his recovering mental capacity simply because he was excited about finding moving water.

He walked down to the edge.

The stone was slick. He crouched slowly and placed his fingers in the stream. It was very cold.

He pulled his hand out and stared at the water running over his fingers.

"At least you’re real."

The stream wasn’t wide enough to qualify as a river, but after the queen’s route, it looked beautiful.

Silver removed his pack and sat on a relatively flat section of stone several feet from the water. The moment his weight left his legs, exhaustion hit him harder than expected.

He lowered his head, his breathing heavier than it should have been.

For the first time since killing the Cave Stalker, he allowed himself to truly assess how badly his body had deteriorated again during the journey.

The answer wasn’t pleasant; his thighs burned, his lower back ached constantly, his shoulder remained stiff beneath the dressing and his ribs were better than before, but still painful whenever he twisted.

He looked at his feet... Silver frowned.

His feet had been hurting for hours. He had simply ignored them because everything else hurt more.

He removed one boot, then immediately regretted not checking earlier. Several blisters covered the side of his foot and one had already broken. The skin around his heel was raw.

Silver eyes widened.

"You’ve got to be kidding me."

He removed the second boot to find that that foot looked almost as bad.

Apparently walking and climbing through underground tunnels for absurd stretches while injured wasn’t particularly friendly to human feet.

He leaned backward. For several seconds, he simply sat there staring at them, then something occurred to him.

How long had he actually been moving?

Since everything started.

His sense of time had become terrible underground. There was no sunlight, no sunset, no natural distinction between morning and evening. He slept whenever exhaustion overwhelmed him and moved whenever his body allowed it.

Silver looked toward the system.

"Give me the total elapsed time since the original collapse."

The response appeared immediately.

[Calculating.]

Silver waited.

A second notification replaced it.

[Elapsed Time Since Initial Cave Collapse: 3 Days, 12 Hours, 23 Minutes.]

Silver went completely still. He read it again just to confirm he wasn’t hallucinating.

More than three days.

For a moment, he genuinely thought the system had made an error.

"Three days?"

[Confirmed.]

He looked around the cavern as though the stone walls might somehow explain where all that time had gone. He mentally reconstructed everything that had happened to him.

Apparently after the fight with the stalker, he’d spent far longer moving than he realized.

He rubbed his face.

"Three and a half days."

The number made his concern for Ravenna return immediately.

Three days was enough time for everything outside to have changed.

If Antony had successfully gotten her out, she would have reached the observation center long ago and if she’d followed his instructions, she could already be on her way to Alpha Three.

Maybe she was already there.

Silver thought of the emotional milestone he’d received. Maybe that had happened after she reached someone who could help.

Shawn, perhaps.

Silver hoped so.

He looked at his phone as expected, no signal. He connected the network restoration module anyway.

The device came alive.

[Searching for External Networks...]

Silver watched.

The indicator remained empty, then...

[No External Signal Detected.]

He closed his eyes briefly.

"Still nothing."

Silver disconnected it.

The disappointment was stronger now especially after knowing how long he had been gone. It was sort of disheartening to find that out.

Ravenna had no confirmation he was alive and the fact that the system could still read her emotions didn’t mean she knew anything about him.

He imagined her standing outside the collapsed cave. He imagined her refusing to leave. He imagined Antony dragging her away because Silver had asked him to.

That thought made his chest feel tighter than any injury. Silver pushed the phone aside.

He couldn’t change that from here, not yet. The only thing he could do was keep moving upward until something connected. But first, his body desperately needed attention.

Silver opened the medical kit.

He removed the old dressings from his shoulder and thigh to find that both wounds had improved considerably, to his surprise.

The Cave Stalker’s claw marks across his back were closing. The wound along his chest had sealed. The thigh injury still looked ugly but no longer bled.

His body was recovering faster than any normal person’s should, although between the system medicines, beast integration and his strengthened constitution, Silver wasn’t particularly surprised anymore.

He started cleaning the wounds with water from his purified supply rather than the stream.

The moment he finished cleaning his shoulder, a notification appeared.

[Skill Progress Notification.]

Silver paused.

"What?"

The system expanded.

[Primal Strength Lv2 has accumulated significant proficiency.]

Silver’s eyebrows rose.

Another line appeared.

[Repeated high-load physical exertion detected.]

[Extended climbing activity recorded.]

[Repeated combat applications recorded.]

[Sustained muscular strain under adverse physical condition recorded.]

Silver’s tired expression slowly changed.

[Primal Strength Lv2 proficiency: 96%.]

[Skill Advancement Threshold Approaching.]

Silver stared in surprise, then smiled. This time he remembered not to laugh.

"Now that’s good news."

He had been so focused on surviving that he’d almost forgotten skills could improve naturally through repeated use.

And if anything deserved to count as repeated physical exertion, the last few days absolutely did. Apparently all of that suffering was finally giving him something useful.

Silver lifted one hand and flexed his fingers.

Primal Strength Level Three.

That could be a substantial increase. His current strength already exceeded what someone at his rank should normally possess, especially combined with the strength ape tattoo and his attribute improvements.

Another level could make a serious difference.

"Four percent." He stared at the skill progression. "That’s all I’m missing."

The system provided no shortcut.

Silver wasn’t surprised. He wasn’t about to start doing push-ups beside the stream either since his body would probably file a formal complaint.

He returned to cleaning himself. He removed the ruined clothing slowly because dried blood had caused portions of the fabric to stick against his skin.

The shirt was beyond saving, again. He stared at the torn material after removing it.